Be all that you can be: Pentagon issues manual on how to change one’s sex at taxpayers’ expense

In its never-ending quest to appease what its critics call politically correct social engineers, the Obama administration’s Pentagon has issued a new manual to its commanders.

The directive provides guidelines on extended time off for troops wishing to change their sex.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. /Getty Images

The Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy must set up a new bureaucracy — dubbed the Service Central Coordination Cell — to guide commanders overseeing sex change transitions, security correspondent Rowan Scarborough reported in The Washington Times.

“We have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said.

The active U.S. military force of 1.3 million has 1,300 to 6,600 transgender service members, according to the Rand Corp.

Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer opposed to President Barack Obama’s policy of gays in the military and women in land combat, said Carter is “delusional if he believes our military needs transgenders/transsexuals to remain the ‘finest fighting force in the world.’ ”

“Transsexuals suffer from more psychiatric pathologies than the general population, and active suicide ideation and major depression episodes occur more frequently within this group,” Maginnis said. “Creating a bureaucracy to sort out transgender issues will go down in the history of our armed forces as the worst waste of defense dollars ever.

“Further, hiring a medical staff to provide ongoing treatment for these people robs precious money better used for treating our war wounded,” he said.

According to Scarborough’s report, the Pentagon manual states that the sex-transition process starts with “approving government-funded medical treatment of genital reconstruction surgery and hormone therapy, and then recovery, and then the final phase of determining the member’s fitness to return to duty after he or she receives a new official ‘gender marker.’ Commanders must hold training sessions to indoctrinate troops on transgender issues and nondiscrimination.”

Commanders must be bias-free, the directive says. They are given the option of putting a transgender individual on extended leave depending on how long the sex change takes. If a transgender combatant is not deployable, the person must be judged in the same way as personnel with other medical conditions.

Personnel will not be able to live as their “preferred gender” in the pre-transition phase called “Real Life Experience (RLE),” the instruction says.

“Although in civilian life this phase is generally categorized by living and working full-time in the preferred gender, consistent application of military standards will normally require that RLE occur in an off-duty status and away from the service member’s place of duty, prior to the change of a gender marker,” the document says.

Once the transition is complete, “transgender personnel must use the berthing, showers and bathrooms associated with their new gender markers.”

“Where possible, gender transition should be conducted such that a Service member would meet all applicable standards and be available for duty in the birth gender prior to a change in the member’s gender marker and would meet all applicable standards and be available for duty in the preferred gender after the change in gender marker,” the instruction says.

A separate Pentagon memo provides direction on transgender recruits.

If a recruit has a history of gender dysphoria, he or she may not join unless a physician certifies the recruit has completed medical treatment and has been stable for 18 months, the report said.

“We have an obligation to provide medically necessary care and treatment to all of our service members in order to keep the force medically ready to deploy,” said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon.

“We have transgender members in the military services today. We believe that we have the same obligation to them that we have to our other service members. Allowing these transgender individuals to serve openly does not bring new medical problems into the military. It brings these medical problems into the open and enables us to treat them in a way that promotes the readiness of the force.”